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Whitepapers
Browse our collection of whitepapers on bill of materials (BOM) management, manufacturing outsourcing, compliance, new product introduction, and more.
Featured Whitepaper
The Wrong Job for a Great Tool: The Hidden Costs of Using Excel for BOM Management
This whitepaper outlines some of the hidden costs of managing your BOM with Excel and compares Excel with a modern system designed specifically for BOM management.
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3 Tips for Effective Product Revision Control and Communication
In this whitepaper we describe how controlling product data, ensuring all changes are documented and communicate the correct product data to internal and external partners, and having an effective system in place for revision control helps companies bring new products to market without missed ship dates and cost targets. Download now
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3 Essential Tips for BOM Control
Getting a product built right the first time so you can ship on time and within budget is no small feat. But, by establishing and maintaining control over your bill of materials you can ensure that you’ll meet your product cost and delivery targets — every time. We’ll show you how in this whitepaper. Download now
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3 Essential Tips for Effective Change Management
Controlling changes to your product data is essential to preventing manufacturing disasters like scrap, rework and product recalls. Using spreadsheets, email and other ad-hoc methods to control product changes exposes your product and your company to significant risk. This whitepaper describes how you can control product changes cost effectively to avoid embarrassing and expensive manufacturing disasters. Download now
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Pass Your Audit with Confidence: Five Tips from Medical Device Startups that Managed Their First Audit Successfully
We interviewed three Class II medical device startup companies who recently passed FDA and ISO inspection audits and gathered their audit preparation tips. Learn how these companies addressed the challenges they encountered while preparing for and going through an audit. Download now
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Starting Up Without a Wipe Out: A Product Disaster Story—4 tips to sharing your product data without losing control
When unexpected things happen and your product data isn’t well documented, you may miss more than just your ship date. Download this whitepaper to learn how to better control your product data and watch a short video on how Arena helps you collaborate without losing control. Download now
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Everything Goes Boom: A Product Disaster Story—3 tips for a complete AND correct BOM
This whitepaper tells the story of how one company’s uncontrolled BOM left them with a pile of scrap and a delayed launch. Learn how to take control of your bill of materials and prevent something like this from happening to you. Download now
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Whose BOM is it Anyway? A Product Disaster Story – 3 Tips for Taking Control of Your Bill of Materials
This whitepaper tells the story of how one company’s uncontrolled BOM left them with a pile of scrap and a delayed launch. Learn how to take control of your bill of materials and prevent something like this from happening to you. Download now
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Upgrading to Electronic Records Management: Four Ways Medical Device Companies can Implement a System Smoothly
This whitepaper outlines how an electronic records management system can help medical device companies manage their design history files, device master records, test reports, and more. It continues with key steps companies must take as they select and put an electronics records management system in place. Download now
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Bait and Switch: A Product Disaster Story—3 tips for communicating the right product information to your suppliers every time
This whitepaper tells the story of how one company’s use of Excel to manage parts in their BOM resulted in their hit product suffering high return rates after they ramped up production at a second contract manufacturer. Learn where their part specification went wrong, and how to keep something like this from happening to you. Download now
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Lost in the Woods: A Product Disaster Story—The 3 things you should do to prevent revision control failures
This whitepaper shares one company’s struggle with revision control and communication that ends with their new product missing its high-profile launch. We will walk through the root causes, and 3 things you need to do to prevent this from happening to your company. Download now
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Up in Smoke: A Product Disaster Story—The 3 things you need to know about managing product changes
This whitepaper tells the story of one company’s struggle with paper based processes that ended with their hit product being recalled, what caused it, and how to keep something like this from happening to you. Download now
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Moving From Paper to Electronic Change Management: Five Key Issues to Consider as Your Company Addresses 21 CFR Part 11
It is possible to achieve 21 CFR Part 11 compliance while quickly and easily implementing an electronic change management system. This whitepaper from Arena Solutions provides guidelines for meeting FDA regulations as you move from a paper based system to an electronic system. Download now
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5 Steps to Scaling Your Business When Your Competition Stumbles
What you know about your business today will help you get ahead, but what you don’t know can cost you time, money and market share. Arena has written a whitepaper to help manufacturing leaders determine how well they and their organization know the condition of their products and business. Download now
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Exit Strategies: Ten Ways to Organize Your Data for Moving Out of Excel
When you’re trying to get your product to market, the last thing you need is to deal with the uncertainty Excel brings, including duplicated part numbers and uncontrolled spreadsheets that lead to incorrect product runs. In this whitepaper we examine one company’s situation and learn how Excel was holding them back and the steps they took to transition to a dedicated BOM management system. Download now
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Surviving a Single Point of Failure: Ten Tips on How to Get By When You’re Relying on Excel
Many companies rely on Excel to manage their critical product data like bills of materials, supplier information and purchasing data; a decision that may be limiting the ability to thrive—or even survive. In part two of our Excel series we outline 10 tips for using Excel in the best way possible to avoid risks. Download now
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Three Steps to Cost Control: Addressing the Root Cause of Unexpected Product Costs
Many companies continue to rely on outdated processes and “free” tools like spreadsheets to manage their product information. These may seem like money-saving shortcuts but often end up being costly and time-consuming. The paper explains how a dedicated bill of materials (BOM) management system can help prevent unexpected costs and provides 3 essential steps to get your processes and systems in order. Download now
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Beyond Colored Folders and Spreadsheets: Next- Generation Document Control for the Medical Device Industry
Medical device manufacturers face unique obstacles in effectively managing and securely sharing their product information. This whitepaper gives insight into how automated, electronic solutions can help medical device companies better manage their device master record (DMR), design history file (DHF) and change orders. Download now
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The Wrong Job for a Great Tool: The Hidden Costs of Using Excel for BOM Management
Many companies still rely on “free” programs like Excel to manage their product BOMs. This whitepaper outlines some of the hidden costs—such as failed products, missed delivery dates and blown cost targets—and compares Excel with a modern system designed specifically for BOM management. Download now
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Turning Great Designs Into Great Products: The Changing World of Mechanical Design
Arena Solutions has worked with over 300 companies across diverse industries to improve their product development and manufacturing processes. Through seven years of working with customers, Arena understands the daily challenges companies face in effectively turning designs to products. In this paper we hope to shed some light on this very important topic. Download now
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Estimating Product Costs During Development
Accurate whole-product cost information during development is critical for effective product planning, yet many organizations struggle with outdated tools that fail to provide timely cost estimates. This paper evaluates current solutions for managing cost data and compares them across several quantitative and qualitative criteria. Download now
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The Arena Guide to Outsourcing: Removing Barriers, Maintaining Boundaries
The Arena Guide to Outsourcing describes a new solution for outsourcing that lets you focus on your product development and work seamlessly with outsourced manufacturers and vendors. Download now
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Manufacturing Outsourcing: 7 Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Through our years of experience in working with electronics OEMs and CMs, we have observed 7 common pitfalls that impact manufacturing outsourcing success. In this whitepaper, we will offer insight on these 7 common mistakes and steps that can be taken to address them. Download now
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Manufacturing Outsourcing for Small and Mid-Size Companies: 10 Key Challenges and How to Address Them
Small and mid-size companies must pursue outsourcing with more planning, preparation, analysis, and due diligence than larger companies. This whitepaper examines 10 key challenges that smaller companies may face when outsourcing their manufacturing—and potential solutions for how to successfully address those challenges. Download now
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New Product Introduction Challenges & Solutions
In today’s competitive global market, innovative products are not enough. Companies must radically rethink the way new product introductions are managed in order to accelerate time to market, reduce product cost, and adhere to increasingly stringent environmental and regulatory requirements. Download now
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Beyond BOM 101: Next Generation Bill of Materials Management
In the world of hardware development and manufacturing, the bill of materials (BOM) is a critical product information record for both the engineering and manufacturing teams. Learn how modern bill of materials (BOM) solutions can help companies effectively manage and communicate product information and succeed in highly competitive environments. Download now
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Collaborative Tools for Product Development: A New Approach
Collaboration is promised as a benefit of many product development tools, but most fall short. This Arena whitepaper, Collaborative Tools for Product Development: A New Approach, defines a vision for collaboration in product development and explains how Arena fulfills it. Download now
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Transition to RoHS: The Seven Common Pitfalls to Avoid
When it comes to the RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Directive, good things do not come to those who wait. This directive, which severely limits the use of six hazardous substances—most notably, lead (Pb)—in products shipped to the European Union (EU), is set to take effect in July 2006. Similar requirements will take shape in China, Taiwan, Japan, and other countries in the near future. Download now
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Documenting RoHS Compliance: 7 Tips from the Field
With the European Union’s (EU) Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive set to take effect on July 1, 2006, manufacturers (or “producers”) who ship to Europe must ensure their products are fully RoHS-compliant-that is, that they don’t exceed maximum concentration levels of certain hazardous substances. Download now
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Product Change Management: Three Challenges, Five Fixes
There’s no need to settle for inefficient, frustrating product change management. This whitepaper outlines three product change management realities you need to understand, five fixes to rescue your change process and one strong solution. Download now


